While speaking today at breakup day, John Tortorella said the following:

“The surrounding feeling is that it’s a negative season or a disappoint season but I won’t buy it, I won’t. There are some good things that happened. I don’t think we took a step backwards, I think it was a sideways step with our lineup and how things worked out. We played really well the last couple of months to get in, found a way to win a big series against Washington and against Boston I thought we competed right to the end.”

In a radio interview on April 26th, John Tortorella told Michael Kay that he wasn’t afraid to call this Rangers season a sideways step in the process. He talked about losing a big piece of the team with Brandon Prust and that going to the Eastern Conference Finals doesn’t just allow you to walk into the Stanley Cup Final.

On May 1st, Tortorella, with Mike Francesa, said that the Rangers lost the middle of their lineup but took a sideways step this year in getting a player like Rick Nash. He said that it’s easier to fix the smaller problems like the middle of the lineup than it is to acquire a guy like Nash.

On May 14th, with Mike Francesa, Tortorella said that this year was a sideways step for the Rangers and that he felt an identity was starting to form with the team.

Henrik Lundqvist told Katie Strang on breakup day that this was a backwards step for the Rangers.

The NY Post said that losing to the Bruins in the second round was also a backwards step.